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Composing Secrets 2: Basic instrument sounds

Topic started by rjay (@ 206.152.113.140) on Thu Aug 24 13:57:03 EDT 2000.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Though MIDI started as a way of controlling
electronic instruments, one of its major values
was in making a standard set of instruments,
a basic set. In early 80s, each manufacturer
started implementing their own set of controllers, and
Roland came up with the best definition and it
was adopted by everyone else and called General
MIDI. It is basically a language to describe a
performance in terms of notes, instruments and controls
to a synthesiser, so that it can play it.

As a first step, it defines 128 instruments in
16 groups:

1.Pianos
2. Tuned idiophones (bells?) or (melodic percussion)
3. Organs
4. Guitars
5. Basses
6. Strings
7. Ensemble strings and voices
8. Brasses
9. Reeds
10. Pipes
11. Synth Leads
12. Synth Pads
13. Musical effects
14. Ethnic
15. Percussion
16. Sound effects

A good composer must use instruments from all these
groupings. Piano, guitars are versatile and
can play melody and harmony and even percussive
rhythms!

Organs are generally used for harmonic backing
and so are strings. Brasses, Reeds and pipes
play solo but also can play in ensemble, an
harmony. Synth leads (lead is a name for
melody) Synth Pads (harmony). Ethnic instruments
generally play melody, though I have used
Koto for harmony recently. Musical effects
and sound effects are just the sixth group
we have not talked about!

Let us take each group and look at the sounds
closely.

PIANO:

Piano is one of the greatest instruments ever
invented. It can play melody, harmony and solo.
A single pianist can play and create the impression
of a whole orchetra.
It can play a wide range of notes (from very low
pitch to very high pitch) it can sound soft (piano)
or strong(forte).

There are eight variations on the piano sound.
0. Acoustic Grand Piano
1. Bright Acoustic Piano
2. Honky-Tonk Piano
3. Electric Grand Piano
4. Electric Piano 1
5. Electric Piano 2
6. Harpsichord
7. Clavichord

This weekend I will upload a same piece played
one after the other, in each of these
sounds. And you can see the uniqueness of each.

0 and 1 are used in all classical compositions.

-------------------------------------------------------
EX 4: List some TFM songs in which you have heard an
acoustic piano. (most cases when the hero is
singing for the heroines Bday party and
the third guy is proposing to marry the girl!
-------------------------------------------------------

MSV had an excellent player (Was it Joseph Krishna or
Henry Daniel) who played in Pasa Malar movie.
V.Kumar has some great piano songs. Raja created
great emphasis for piano solos and used very
complicated chord progressions.

Our own Naveen Jebaraj has an mp3.com page (mp3.com/naveen_jebaraj)
with his acoustic piano recordings. And he has
rendered some of the best piano based TFM songs on
his MIDI page. (Unnidam mayangugiren, Enna enna
vaarthaigalo)

Honky Tonk piano sounds a little detuned, and was
used in Jazz and country (boogie) music. I think it
has been used for comical effect in TFM. (?)

Electric Grand piano and the other two sounds are
recent innovations. This is how they came about.
When the first synthesisers (analog and FM synths)
tried to create piano sound, they created their
own version of it and people started using them.
So they wanted them in GM palette.

Harpsichord is the father of piano and was a
velocity insensitive loud fellow, but can be
used in a majestic way. Bach's best compositions
sound divine in H.chord.

Clavichord or clavinet. I dont know much about this instrument,
though I have heard it used in a Raaja song. From the
sound I suspect it to be the electronic simulation of
a harpsichord!

--------------------------------------------------------
Ex. 4.1 Do exercise 4 for each of the above.
----------------------------------------------------------

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: rjay (@ 4.54.59.84) on: Tue Aug 29 23:37:33 EDT 2000
  
  Naveen, Srinath
  
  Nice to see your participation. Vaanilae
  prelude seems to be a guitar with effect
  or harpsichord variation on DX-7 FM synth.
  
  rjay
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 4.54.59.84) on: Tue Aug 29 23:45:23 EDT 2000
  
  Dear friends,
  
  I have added short audio demo files on the following
  site: www.mp3.com/workshop
  
  First, I have taken the same piano solo
  and played it on 5 different piano sounds.
  Acoustic, Bright, Electric Grand and Electric
  chorused, and Harpsichord. See the difference
  in tone quality.
  
  Next, I have composed two short pieces
  for Clavinet and also the Rhodes electric
  piano, which exploit their unique sound.
  
  Hopefully you will be able to familiarize
  yourself with the sounds and can recognize them
  in songs. Additionally, these are typically
  4-bar phrases, so you can use them freely in
  your compositions. (remixes). In a later
  article, we will see how to use any 4 bar
  phrase as a trigger to create your compositions.
  
  
  Sorry for the delay. I had uploaded this on
  Friday to my geocities site and was asked to
  remove the mp3 files. So I created a workshop
  site on mp3.com.
  
  comments welcome.
  
  anbudan
  rjay
  
  
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 4.54.59.84) on: Tue Aug 29 23:48:35 EDT 2000
  
  Here is the direct link to the audio demos:
  
  Music" target="_top">http://www.mp3.com/workshop">Music workshop
  
  anbudan
  RJAY
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 4.54.59.84) on: Wed Aug 30 00:02:06 EDT 2000
  
  oops,
  
  here is the link:
  
  http://www.mp3.com/workshop
  
  
  
• From: vijay (@ 129.252.22.221) on: Wed Aug 30 01:51:29 EDT 2000
  
  rjay,
  first of all thanx for starting a meaningful thread after a long time :-). reg. your MIDI pieces the difference between acoustic and grand piano is very subtle. All I could say is that bright acoustic piano has a slight metallic touch to it as compared to grand. What are the perveptible differences as far as the 2 instruments are concerned.
  
  reg. examples for acoustic piano see if the foll are OK:
  
  unnidam mayangugiren (one of the best pieces I have heard by V.Kumar)
  
  ellorum nalam vaazha or dil ke tharoke(brahmachari) (hero expressing one-way love for heroine?;))
  
  (recalling fom memory) - prelude of Pahla nasha from Jo jeeta wohi sikander(not TFM ofcourse but coudnt help it, the prelude is striking)
  
  thenmadurai vaigai nadhi - tharmathin thalaivan
  
  Iam sure there are lot more. keep posting.
  
  
• From: vijay (@ 129.252.22.221) on: Wed Aug 30 01:56:01 EDT 2000
  
  rjay,
  A suggestion. As things are quite dynamic here in newtfmpage, before u realise your thread would have been pushed to the archives and a bunch of ARR-IR threads would appear all of a sudden. So I suggest u progress sequentially and finish composing secrets part 1 and move to part 2 and so on. maintaining too many threads together is not easy unless they are permanent ;) In that way the interest too could be maintained and attention wont get diluted.
  
  
• From: kiru (@ 192.138.149.4) on: Wed Aug 30 10:58:02 EDT 2000
  
  Vijay,
  The bright piano is just bright. The Grand Piano is also Acoustic. 'Bright/warm' and 'cold/sweet' are terms that one should get familiar with in characterising the color of sound. If it gets too bright it will sound 'noisy'. Cold is almost soft/smooth. To give you an example, almost all of ARR's songs, except kandukondEn, kandukondEn, are 'cold/sweet'. But real/acoustic recordings are usally bright/warm.
  Note the term 'warm' has a +ve connotation and bright has a -ve connotation. Similary 'cold' has -ve connotation and 'sweet' =ve.
  (Ravi, great job. You are realy contributing to the information revolution !!!)
  
  

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